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Two Notes on Iliad 91

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M.D. Reeve
M.D. Reeve
Affiliation:
Exeter College, Oxford
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Extract

IT has long been recognized that Circe's instructions to Odysseus at Od. 10. 516–40 were composed after their fulfilment at 11. 2 3–50.2 Something similar in Iliad 9 seems to have been overlooked.

Agamemnon–s offer to Achilles at 122–57 is reported by Odysseus at 264–99 in more or less the same words.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , May 1972 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 1 note 2 Kirchhoff, , Die homerische Odyssee (Berlin, 1879), 222–3;Google ScholarBlass, , Die Interpolationen in der Odyssee (Halle, 1904), 119–20;Google ScholarSchwartz, , Die Odyssee (Munich, 1924), 137;Google ScholarPage, , The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford, 1955), 29–31.Google Scholar

page 1 note 3 Cf. 559 and Fraenkel on Ag. 532.

page 1 note 4 Dr. West points out that might have been ambiguous, since the person last mentioned was the hypothetical ảνήρ of 267; but there would surely have been no greater temptation to connect with this ảνήρ than to connect in 284 with Priam (278).

page 1 note 5 Il. 5. 580, II. 154; Od. 3. 34, 5. 234, 11. 260, 266. Leaf on 134 maintains that at Il. II 154 the elision makes a difference; but what matters is the pause in the middle of the line, which has nothing to do with elision. It is worth noticing that in three of the other five instances, as in 134, the second half of the line is occupied by an appositional phrase.

page 1 note 6 The aorist active occurs, and so do other tenses of the middle, but not the aorist middle. See Ebeling, , Lexicon Homericum (Leipzig, 1885).Google Scholar

page 1 note 7 Young, Douglas, Arion, vi (1967), 312,Google Scholar notices that the change from 134 to 276 is not ‘made necessary by the change of subject’ (Hoekstra, , Homeric Variations of Formulaic Prototypes [Amsterdam, 1965], 19)Google Scholar but proposes a fanciful explanation: Agamemnon, in offering to return Briseis, ‘says he will swear that he had never mounted her bed or had intercourse with her “as is the fashion of mankind, of men and women” (9. 34). In repeating Agamemnon's offers to Achilles, Odysseus realizes this is a touchy topic, and alters Agamemnon's hexameter to run: “as is the fashion, my lord [anox], of men and women” (9. 276). Considering that Odysseus had earlier addressed Achilles as pepon (252), … that “my Lord” shows a tactful solicitude for correctness and deference, appropriate to Odysseus' wily character and to the dramatic juncture.’

page 2 note 1 An oral poet could perhaps compose back to front if he rehearsed back to front, but would he rehearse back to front?

page 2 note 2 The antithesis in 37–9 may be a retort to the antithesis in 4. 399–400.

page 2 note 3 The term ‘interpolation’ is best reserved for additions to the canonical text, though the methods of the oral poet are in many respects those of an interpolator.

page 2 note 4 Against 9 initial instances in the Iliad, 8 in the Odyssey, and 2 in the Hymns, are be set only Od. 14. 443, where it is second word, and Il. 13. 448. Position seems to be ignored by Brunius-Nilsson, Elisabeth, ΔAIMONIE: An Inquiry into a Mode of Apostrophe in Old Greek Literature (Uppsala, 1955);Google Scholar but her remarks on the passage under discussion lend support to the separation of 40–9 from 32–9: ‘This speech, which begins with the statement of certain facts, then becomes strangely tinged with emotion, when the vocative δαιόνιє is used’ (p. 25).

The language of 32–9 is far from precise, in 32, whether it goes with σοí or with μαҼήσομαι serves no purpose: he does not quarrel with anyone else, and with Agamemnon he does nothing but quarrel. in 34 would most naturally mean ‘the first thing you cast aspersions on was my valour’, but in 37 changes the emphasis and shows that must mean something unparalleled in Homer outside subordinate clauses (e.g. Il. 5. 848, 15. 75). in 35 is presumably a compression of ‘the full truth about my performance on the field’ (Od. II. 223, cited by Ameis-Hentze, is straight-forward).

page 3 note 1 Bergk, , Griechische Literaturgeschichte, i (Berlin, 1872), 596,Google Scholar The passage of Nitzschreferred to by Ameis-Hentze in the Anhang concerns not Il. 9. 34–6 but Od. 9. 34–6.

page 3 note 2 Hainsworth, , Homer (Greece Rome , New Surveys in the Classics no. 3 [Oxford, 1969]), 29.Google Scholar The quotation illustrates the following comment of Heitsch, , Gnomon, xlii (1970), 440:Google Scholar ‘Erscheinungen, die früher zu analytischen Überlegungen veranlaßt und so unmittelbaren Einblick in die Entstehungsgeschichte unserer Epen gewährt haben, gelten jetzt als—letzten Endes belanglose—Eigenheiten der oral tradition, die ihrerseits in die Vorgeschichte unserer Epen gehört.’

page 3 note 3 Förstel, , Glotta, xlii (1970), 168.Google Scholar The article is an undiscriminating attack on Heitsch, , Epische Kunstsprache und homerische Chrtmologie (Heidelberg, 1968).Google Scholar

page 3 note 4 The orthodox arguments for this theory are examined by Pope, M.W.M., Ada Classica, vi (1963, pub. 1964), 1–21.Google Scholar

page 3 note 5 ‘Homer’ is the author of the Iliad in its present form, which dates back no further than the sixth century. Unless Homer lived in the sixth century, therefore, he was not ‘Homer’, and people who claim to know what he composed or how he composed are deluding themselves.

No one has made this elementary but much neglected point with more vigour and clarity than Bethe, , Homer, i (Leipzig, 1914), 50–6,Google Scholar ii (Leipzig, 1922), 294–302. ‘Statt unserer Ilias und unserer Odyssee will man „Homer“ datiren. Aber was ist „Homer“? Ein schwankendes Idealgebilde klassischer Epik, das jedem seine Phantasie anders malt’ (ii. 295–6). On the date of the present Iliad, see i. 50–6, ii. 303–28 (not all equally cogent).

page 3 note 6 ‘Mir scheint, gerade der, der die in der oral poetry wirkenden Kräfte des Erinnerns und Tradierens ernst nimmt, wird mit neuer Entschiedenheit fragen, „ob die Ilias sich aus allerkleinsten gleichberechtigten Zellen zusammensetzt, oder ob wir auf unauflösbare Teile stoßen, die bereits geformt sind, also Poesie darstellen“. Die damit bezeichnete Alternative dürfte die heute angemessene Form der homerischen Frage sein’ (Heitsch, 27). The quotation is from Friedrich, , Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias (Göttingen, 1956), 80.Google Scholar Cf. Pope, op. cit. 19: ‘Did he build brick by brick, or in prefabricated sections?’

page 4 note 1 Förstel, 168.

page 4 note 2 ‘Homer’ may have worked with written rather than oral stories, and even if worked with oral stories, at least one scholar well versed in oral epic sees no objection to the idea that the whole Iliad, not just small parts of it, was transmitted orally for a time with little variation (Kirk, , CQ liv [1960], 274–9,Google ScholarProc. Camb. Phil. Soc. cxcvi [1970], 51–6)Google Scholar. On the relative importance in oral epic of improvisation and memorization see Hoekstra, op. cit. 18–20, and Young, op. cit.

page 4 note 3 C. Rothe, pp. 154–68 of ‘Die Bedeutung der Wiederholungen für die homerische Frage’, , in Festschrift des königlichen französischen Gymnasiums (Berlin, 1890), 123–68.Google Scholar Rothe's argument is summed up as follows by Cauer, , Grundfragen der Homerkritik (Leipzig1, 1895), 268,Google Scholar = 2(1909), 487, = 3(1921), 611: ‘Rothe war der erste, der … den richtigen Schluß zog: wo sich wört-Iiche oder fast wörtliche Übereinstimmung zwischen zwei Stellen findet, da braucht nicht eine der anderen nachgeahmt zu sein; sondern die Übereinstimmung kann dadurch entstanden sein, daß die Verfasser beider Stellen aus dem überkommenen Sprach-und Gedankenschatze der epischen Poesie ein fertiges Stück sich zunutze machten, wobei es sehr wohl möglich war, daß dann und wann gerade dem jüngeren Sänger die Einfügung des angeeigneten Verses oder Satzes besser und täuschender glückte.’

The point is sometimes put inaccurately: ‘the fact that formulae, or most of them, are common property means that no occurrence of a line or phrase is in any sense a quotation or a reminiscence of another occurrence’ (Hainsworth, 30; for ‘is’ read ‘need be’).

page 4 note 4 A use in epic is secondary if it is anomalous and a precedent in epic accounts for it. The word is an uncontroversial example: see Leumann, , Homerische Wörter (Basel, 1950), 52.Google Scholar

page 4 note 5 That is to say, conditions exist (e.g. at Od. 10. 516–40) under which the objector gives as much away by arguing ‘the poet may have drawn on a similar passage and not this one’ as by admitting at once ‘he drew on this passage’. Förstel misses this point in his sweeping criticism (p. 166) of Heitsch's attempt at defining the conditions under which secondary uses are significant (p. 18).